Living in blindness. Houses, atmospheres, and perceptive landscapes through the eyes of some 20th-century masters

Abstract

Jorge Luis Borges confessed, on more than one occasion, that his modest blindness was not the dramatic darkness that common sense believes but rather a refuge that, in his case, was built in a slow twilight. At the end of his speech to receive the Honoris Causa degree from the Faculty of Philosophy and Letters of the University of Chile, the Argentine writer spoke about the gradual parting of his sight and the pleasant sensation of entering a new, richer, deeper, and more creative living space. Relying on blindness as an introspective landscape, as a habitable space where fantasy meets realism, it is in this context that the essay proposes to inhabit, with thought, a weightless and infinite domestic space. Other artists achieved it - Groussac, Monet, Homer, Joyce, Herzog, Pallasmaa, and Italo Calvino - turning this kind of induced blindness into an intimate and creative room in which to settle at the end of their lives. Professor Yeager introduces this story, making us ascend to the heavens in search of an inspiring, black, and profound space. The house dreamed by Manuel Parra and Danilo Veras leads us away from the light to discover ourselves in a unique sensory experience. From the hand of the master Lewerentz, this essay will bring together some architectural experimentations with a singular dark box, an asphalt and black environment: black box in Lund. Living in blindness suggests a revision of our perceptual field, imaginatively inhabiting these introspective places where laws seem to have disappeared. Blindness, as Borges mentioned in that speech, makes the body join the space to dream of a new, more poetic, and creative dwelling (Figure 1).